Bili Buzz - Popular Science, Nature, Medicine, Archeology, Future & Myths

Rare albino tadpoles have been found in a garden pond in Wales.

The tadpoles have the distinctive pink eyes and off-white skin colouration associated with albinism.

Although isolated single examples of albino frogs, toads and newts have been seen before this is the first time a whole group has been found.

The exact location of the pond in Carmarthenshire is being kept secret while biologists carry out more research.

Jules Howard of Froglife, the UK wildlife charity which works for the conservation of amphibians and reptiles, said: “Sightings of albino frogs are rare so to find so many tadpoles together is exceptionally rare. It seems that the albino tadpoles are already changing colour and becoming darker so we are going to have to study their metamorphosis into frogs very carefully.”

About 10 clusters of spawn were laid in the pond and the albinos emerged from about four of them.

The pond’s owner, who first noticed the white-tinged tadpoles, said he did not see any albino frogs using the pond during the breeding season.

Albinos, more common in mammals, have inherited altered genes that do not produce the usual amounts of the pigment melanin.

Albinism is a ‘recessive trait’, so even if only one of the two copies passed down from male and female frogs is functional, offspring can make pigment, but will carry the albinism trait.

Both male and female amphibians must carry the defective albino gene to have offspring with albinism and in these circumstances there is a one-in-four chance of albino offspring being produced.

The rare discovery was reported to Froglife’s Wildlife Information Service, a public advice service encouraging people to get involved with amphibian and reptile conservation, last month and a careful watch has been maintained at the pond watching the tadpoles develop.

Froglife’s Wildlife Information Officer, Lucy Benyon, said: “This is certainly one of the stranger enquiries we’ve had recently.

“What’s unusual about this is that the batches of white tadpoles suggest that a number of adults that carry genes for albinism possibly exist in the area, not just one.”

“Usually though albino amphibians fail to live to a breeding age – their white colouration makes them a blindingly conspicuous beacon for the various animals that depend on frogs for food.”

A bird is able to make drops of water defy gravity and flow into its mouth.

A team of MIT mathematicians and engineers has shown that some shorebirds use their long, thin beaks in a tweezering motion to make prey-bearing water droplets rise upwards so they can be consumed.

The work is even more remarkable because last year a team at the University of Bristol, led by Prof Jens Eggers, thought that it was the first to make droplets flow up a slope, by vigorously vibrating the droplets, and announced the feat in the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters.

But now it seems that birds beat them to this gravity defying feat, probably by millions of years.

As Charles Darwin showed nearly 150 years ago, bird beaks are exquisitely adapted to the birds’ feeding strategy.

In this case the north American phalarope takes advantage of surface interactions between its beak and water droplets to propel bits of food from the tip of its long beak to its mouth, the team reports in Science.

Wildlife biologists have long noted the unusual feeding behaviour of phalaropes, which spin in circles on the water, creating a vortex that sweeps small crustaceans up to the surface, just like tea leaves in a swirling tea cup.

The birds peck at the surface, picking up tiny droplets of water with their prey trapped inside.

Since the birds point their beaks downward, gravity must be overcome to get those droplets from the tip of the bird’s long beak to its mouth.

Until now, scientists have been puzzled as to how that happens.

To unravel the mystery, Prof John Bush and colleagues built a mechanical model of the phalarope beak that allowed them to study the process in slow motion.

As the beak scissors open and shut, each movement propels the water droplet one step closer to the bird’s mouth.

In this stepwise ratcheting fashion, the drop travels along the beak at a speed of about 1 meter per second.

The mechanism depends on the chemical properties of the liquid involved, so phalaropes and about 20 other birds species that use this mechanism are extremely sensitive to anything that contaminates the water surface, especially detergents or oil.

“Some species rely exclusively on this feeding mechanism, and so are extremely vulnerable to oil spills,” said Prof Bush.

This gravity-defying action is made possible by the surface tension of water, as well as a physical effect known as “contact angle hysteresis,” which normally causes drops to stick to solids.

When combined with the tweezering motion of the beak, however, this effect enables the water droplets to rise mouthward, explained Prof Bush.

Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor knows the daily balancing act that Alzheimer’s caregivers face: When her husband could no longer stay home alone, she had to take him to work with her at the Supreme Court.

Now O’Connor is taking her family’s struggle with Alzheimer’s public as she calls on Congress on Wednesday to spur efforts to fight the nation’s coming dementia epidemic.

“I cannot overemphasize the need for urgency,” O’Connor said in testimony prepared for the Senate Special Committee on Aging. “We must resolve, by our swift action, that the current generation of people with Alzheimer’s will be the last generation that we lose to this miserable disease.”

More than 5 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease, O’Connor’s husband, John, among them. O’Connor stepped down as the first female Supreme Court justice in 2005 to move her husband to an assisted care center in Phoenix, near two of their children. Intensely private, she has said little until now of the family’s experience except that she regretted having to leave the high court so soon.

Alzheimer’s is poised to skyrocket, with 16 million people forecast to have the mind-destroying illness by 2050. Today’s treatments only temporarily alleviate symptoms. Already, the Alzheimer’s Association estimates that 10 million people share the overwhelming task of caring for a relative or friend with it.

“I suspect that you will not hear from many of my fellow caregivers directly … simply because they do not have the resources to take time away from their loved ones in order to come before you,” O’Connor said.

Against that somber backdrop, a group of scientists, former politicians and well-known names like O’Connor have teamed up to create what they call a “national strategy” to jumpstart efforts to speed research into new Alzheimer’s treatments and improve help for caregivers.

The so-called Alzheimer’s Study Group won’t have its report ready until next year, but began pushing lawmakers Wednesday to start thinking about the needed investment despite tight economic times. Public funding for Alzheimer’s has been stagnant for five years, O’Connor noted.

“You will never meet an Alzheimer’s survivor — there are none,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who co-founded the group, said in his testimony.

Via: Time

A Swiss pilot strapped on a jet-powered wing and leaped from a plane Wednesday for the first public demonstration of the homemade device, turning figure eights and soaring high above the Alps.

Yves Rossy’s performance in front of the world press capped five years of training and many more years of dreaming.

“This flight was absolutely excellent,” the former fighter pilot and extreme sports enthusiast said after touching down on an airfield near the eastern shore of Lake Geneva.

Rossy, 48, had stepped out of the Swiss-built Pilatus Porter aircraft at 7,500 feet and unfolded the rigid eight-foot wings strapped to his back before jumping.

Passing from free fall to a gentle glide, Rossy then triggered four jet turbines and accelerated to 186 miles per hour, about 65 miles per hour faster than the typical falling skydiver. A plane that flew at some distance beside him measured his speed.

Via : Time

Global warming is set to stall over the next 10 years as natural variations in ocean currents counteract manmade climate change.

Researchers modelling the climate of Europe and North America found that a major ocean current that brings warm water northwards is set to weaken, potentially offsetting temperature rises caused by human activity.

A team led by Noel Keenlyside at the Leibniz Institute for Marine Science in Germany focused on an ocean current known as the meridional overturning current or MOC. The current acts as a huge conveyor belt, bringing warm water into the North Atlantic and returning cold water to the south.

Scientists believe the ocean current strengthens and weakens on a natural cycle with a 70 to 80-year period. When the current is strong, it brings warmer water and a milder climate to northern regions.

The team’s models, which were checked against historical temperature changes, suggest the current will weaken enough to cool the North Atlantic, while temperatures in the tropical Pacific are unlikely to change.

The study appears in the journal Nature today.

“Our results show that global mean temperatures may plateau or cool weakly over the next 10 years because of natural fluctuations, but in the long term temperatures will continue to rise,” said Dr Keenlyside. “This doesn’t change the bottom line on global warming.”

Reports from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggest carbon emissions could drive global temperatures up by as much as 0.2C each decade.